Schools, teachers and community: cultivating the conditions for engaged student learning

Abstract

This paper reveals the nature of the actions, discussions and relationships which characterised teachers’ and associated school personnel’s efforts to engage poor and refugee students through a community garden located in a school in a low socio-economic urban area in south-east Queensland, Australia. These actions, discussions and relationships are described as both revealing and producing particular ‘practice architectures’ which help constitute conditions for practice—in this case, conditions for beneficial student learning. The paper draws upon interview data with teachers, other school staff and community members working in the school to reveal the interrelating actions, discussions and relationships involved in developing and using the garden for academic and non-academic purposes. By better understanding such interrelationships as practice architectures, the paper reveals how teachers and those in schooling settings learn to facilitate student learning practices that likely to assist some of the most marginalised students in schooling settings.

Keywords:

• school–community relations
• refugees
• teachers
• practice

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms.

2. Pseudonym for Cultural Development Officer. All names are pseudonyms.

3. Pseudonym for a university lecturer contacted by the Cultural Development Officer to learn more about community gardens.

4. A range of public and not-for-profit organisations providing services to people in the community. All except Queensland Health (the state health department) focus predominantly upon the needs of the poorest and most disenfranchised members of the community.

5. Pseudonym for university.

6. ‘SBS’—Special Broadcasting Service—a national, free-to-air/public television network with a charter to promote multiculturalism in Australia. ‘Costa’s Garden’ is a popular gardening programme on the network.

7. The reference to flooding relates to the devastating flooding throughout Queensland in early 2011.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Hardy

Ian Hardy is a senior lecturer in Educational Studies at the School of Education, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Social Sciences Building, Campbell Rd, Brisbane, Q, 4072, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]. He researches education policy and practice, with a particular focus on the politics of teachers’ learning and continuing professional development. He has recently published The politics of teacher professional development: Policy, research and practice (New York: Routledge, 2012).

Peter Grootenboer

Peter Grootenboer is an associate professor in Education at the School of Education, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. He researches mathematics education with a particular focus on the affective dimension of learning and educational leadership. He is an editor of the Mathematics Education Research Journal.